Bookends
by phalangesbyfive
Summary: A gift and a fight that don't go as expected. Leave it to a writer to be surprised at every turn. One-shot. Contains no spoilers. Cover art by softer.


_For Eline. Congratulations. They're so lucky to have you._

_Thanks to Andy for the title and Jade for looking this over._

* * *

A few inches to the left and-

"Phew." He blows out a gust of cool air, feels it dry the layer of perspiration on his brow as he takes in the new addition to his bedroom.

Perfect. The wood is dark, blends in well with the color scheme he has going. And maybe noticing makes him a metrosexual, but he's too proud to care, and so what if Beckett has been right all along? She usually is anyway.

He's still a little disappointed he couldn't make room for it in his study - the image of her books mingling with his makes the writer in him grin like a fool - but this will do. He didn't exactly plan for another bookshelf when he moved into the loft, and it can't be helped now.

Castle is already picturing the look on her face when she takes it in, the light in her eyes when the meaning hits her.

_This is our home now._

Nothing says that like a five hundred dollar bookcase. Only the best for her. (But she never needs to know the price, because as much as he loves her, he's also fond of his extremities.)

The shelves zig-zag, the left hand side much shorter and suitable for knick knacks and small paperbacks, while the right hand side is perfect for her collection of rather large books containing even larger words, some of which not even he knows. Her vocabulary is something to be admired.

He checks his watch, growing impatient. She isn't due home for another fifteen minutes at least, and he's never been good at waiting.

Maybe he could churn out a chapter of the next Nikki Heat. He's been falling further and further behind ever since his muse began to consume his nights and days with more than just murder, and it would mean he could shadow her tomorrow without a deadline looming over his head.

He plops down in his leather chair, opens the laptop and starts a game of Zombie Attack.

He's fighting off hoards of the undead when the sound of the door opening makes him jump, guilt adding a little too much force to the shut of his laptop. Just his luck she'd show up now.

"You're home!" he exclaims, too flustered to monitor his word choice.

She barely flinches. That's an improvement over the standard freeze and evade scenario whenever he broaches the subject of their separate living arrangements. Maybe this will go even better than he expects.

"Closed the case right after lunch and decided to save the rest of the paperwork for tomorrow." The smile Beckett shoots him makes him spring to his feet.

"Good timing," he tells her, walking over to wrap her in a warm hug. She smells like the precinct and her shampoo.

"Oh, yeah? Wouldn't want to miss a second of your procrastinating." Her elbow digs lightly into his side.

"Ha. I have something to show you." He's really too old to be bouncing up on his toes, but it seems he's lost control of them. Traitors.

She pulls away to give him a skeptical look, her hands still loosely clasped behind his neck. It's never a good sign when he's too distracted to come up with a retort. "What did you do?"

He responds by turning her around and planting a hand over her eyes. "No peeking."

He's pretty sure he doesn't want to know what she's muttering under her breath as they slowly take the few steps necessary to land them in his bedroom. He uses his free hand to give her shoulder a little push in the right direction until they're standing directly in front of the bookcase.

Castle uncovers her eyes with no further ado.

There's a beat of silence wherein he waits for some kind of acknowledgement of the bulky, wooden, _please stop running and move in with me? _gift - maybe a sharp inhalation of breath while she composes herself.

When the silence drags on, he strains his ears, because isn't this awkward pause supposed to be filled with chirping crickets?

Beckett clears her throat, a small noise he's sure she didn't mean to release. He braces himself, already forming an excuse, a way to make this gesture seem like exactly what it isn't.

There is clearly a hole in his perfectly constructed plan.

"Castle, what is this?"

"You don't know what a bookcase looks like by now?"

By the way her shoulders tense, he can immediately tell that humor isn't going to do anything to help him. This is bad. He pushed, and that means she'll pull, yank, run like hell until-

Words rush out of her mouth and he doesn't stand a chance. "I know what a bookcase is, and that's not it. I'm not ready, Castle. *We* aren't ready." She shrugs off his outstretched hand, taking a few steps toward the door and out of his range of motion.

He feels like he's landed in the middle of a silent fight they've been having for months. His chest is crowded with freedom and doom at the release. "We aren't ready for more book space?" His quick temper and quicker tongue never did quite learn when to stop. Bad move. Bad, bad move.

Beckett releases a dark laugh, eyeing him and his gift-gone-wrong with equal parts disgust and disbelief. "You're trying to force me into something you know I'm not comfortable with, trying to use your money to buy me like-"

The sting of her words must register on his face, because she cuts off the sentence with a bite to her lip and a look that's almost apologetic.

"I'd never try to buy you. How can you think that?" He sounds meek, knows it but can't help it, can't get back up now that she's knocked him down with her doubt. Where the fire should be, he's all fading embers.

She shifts her weight and brushes back an irritating strand of hair, rubs her temple to ease the throbbing vein that only pops up under extreme pressure. "Then why? What are you trying to do here?"

"Share my life with you. If I waited for you to decide you're ready, it'd never happen." He slumps back onto his bed, feeling beaten. Even with his gaze settled on the hardwood floors, he keeps his chest held high, won't show the extent of the wound she's inflicted.

"When are you going to see that I'm in this, too, Rick? Is anything I do ever going to be enough to prove that I love you? That I'm not going anywhere?" Beckett's voice is strained with sincerity, so much pent-up frustration that he wasn't aware she'd been carrying, and it all bleeds into her tone, burns like acid.

_How long has she felt this way?_

He looks up in time to catch a suspicious glimmer in her eyes, a hurt matching his own, before she shuts them and takes a deep breath. He doesn't have an answer for that, so he closes his mouth tightly and stares at an imaginary dot by her ear. Because maybe she's right and he's not sure how to apologize through his own anger and pride. Not right now.

"I'm going back to my apartment tonight," she breathes out. As she turns to the study, Beckett pauses in her retreat and faces the bookcase to her right. "It's beautiful."

And then she's out the door and he's left wondering what the hell happened and how to fix it.

This did _not _go as planned.

xxxx

Castle doesn't call her at ten the next morning when he's brooding, flipping through papers and being free with his red pen. He's careless with the pages, bending most of the corners, leaving a messy stack right next to his phone. Everything he wants to ignore all in one place. So convenient.

He doesn't call her at eleven-thirty. The shower he so desperately needs won't take kindly to technology. He dresses facing the back of his bedroom so he isn't taunted by the empty bookcase he no longer knows what to do with.

At four he's too busy napping to even think about calling her, a half-eaten bag of potato chips curled into his side. Alexis comes home, eyes him with pity and covers him with a blanket before heading back out only minutes later.

By eight he's donning a coat and hailing a cab, The Old Haunt greeting him through the rain-streaked windows. It's too loud for a conversation, in person or otherwise, when the piano man plays something lively and a group of drunken friends sing along. Castle buys a round for everyone, encourages the noise and joins in. It's enough to temporarily quiet the mental chaos caused by the first real fight he's had with Beckett since _I love you, too._

He doesn't make it back to his loft until well after ten, enough water in his system to dilute the alcohol. Thoughts of Beckett swarm back uninvited, and maybe it's time to stop acting like a child and call her. One fight doesn't mean he can't check in. It doesn't mean she is reconsidering their involvement. _Right?_

At ten-fifty, he doesn't have to call her, because she's lying on his bed, wet hair in a loose ponytail, when he walks in.

Castle jumps, barely withholds a high-pitched squeal. "Beckett!"

She looks up from her book with a start, then eyes his defensive stance in confusion. "Were you expecting someone else?"

"You're here." He lowers his arms, breathes deeply to get his heart going again.

"Of course I am. It's movie night, and you're late." She gives him a hesitant smile, looking like a cross between amused and offended.

He's just proving her point from last night, isn't he? Making her think he has no faith in her when it comes to their relationship.

No more of that.

Castle smiles back, holding the expression until she breaks his gaze. "We should talk first, though."

He makes a valiant effort to disguise his shock as enthusiastic agreement. Luckily she keeps her eyes locked on the book in her lap and doesn't seem to notice when he fails.

She showed up. No cold shoulder, no need for him to weasel his way back in. She's further in this than he gave her credit for. "I'm sorry," he starts with a sigh.

She sits up and crosses her legs, eyes brimming with timid hope. "For what?" A challenge. A _tell me what you think you did wrong and aren't just taking the easy way out._ He's used to those after two marriages, but from Beckett?

He nods his acceptance; he owes her this. "For pushing you. But mostly for doubting you." One side of her mouth curls up, but it doesn't quite form a smile. Something else, then. But what?

Beckett pats the space in front of her and waits for him to sit with his waist against her knees. "I don't make important decisions without weighing every pro and con." Her voice takes on the calm, purposeful tone she uses with victims' families when she knows they can't hear through their own loud thoughts and she needs to get a point across. It's oddly fitting.

"I know," he interrupts, eyes wide when she gives him a reproachful look. Right. No talking until she's done.

"But that doesn't mean I don't want to say yes. It just means give me - us -" she casts a hand between them, "time to get there." She holds her breath, looking up at him from under her lashes as she searches his face for understanding.

He offers a white flag, wants more than anything to restore her trust. "Baby steps?"

She grins mischievously, suddenly transforming into the confident Beckett he's slightly intimidated by and undeniably in love with, eyes burning with something that makes his blood warm. "No. Adult steps. Very adult steps."

He laughs at that, loud and free and happy because Beckett has completely surprised him tonight, living up to her title as the unsolvable mystery. "Hmm. I can work with that."

She tugs him forward by his collar, wraps her legs around his waist and brings his lips against hers so he can feel every word she speaks into his skin. "I'm sorry, too. For what I said. I know you wouldn't try to buy me."

Castle tries to capture her lips, but she thwarts his attempts every time. He sighs dramatically, resigned to finishing this conversation in a less physical way. Hard to do with her in his lap, but he'll persevere. "Good. We're good, Kate."

The last of the tension in her body melts away, taking his with it, and he leans in to taste her smile. "Okay," she breathes against him.

"So, these adult steps...what's the first one?" Castle teases, sliding one of the spaghetti straps on her shoulder to the side so he can lightly bite the revealed skin. Her shiver is from both a laugh and what he's doing with his tongue.

Then she's lightly but firmly shoving him away. "Over there." She points behind him, raises her eyebrows when he doesn't move to look. He can't help that she's incredibly tempting when they're making up.

Only one way to move this along. He shifts both of them so he can see without losing any contact with her body. She gasps and clutches him tighter so as to not fall off the bed. The muscles in her arms are taut, and he can feel her nervous eyes on him as he stares with an open mouth.

Oh. Oh, she pointed at the bookcase. The bookcase with one shelf now filled.

"I figured I could put a few up there as a courtesy to your living room. They were starting a hostile takeover. The coffee table wasn't going to make it much longer." He turns back to her in time to catch the hint of a tooth tugging at her bottom lip.

He's speechless, unable to express exactly what it means to him. But if her bright eyes are anything to go by, she understands.

She's here. They fought and she came back and she's here.

Something akin to a growl escapes his lips. "Now for step two."


End file.
